BOSTON, June 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc. Chairman, President and CEO Kurt Graves late yesterday presented the very first "Chairman's Key Disruptor Award" to Thomas Alessi, Ph.D., VP of Early Development and Manufacturing. The award was given for Dr. Alessi's remarkable accomplishments during his 17 years with Intarcia accomplishments that have accrued very significant competitive advantages for the Company, and that promise to help bring major medical and economic outcome advantages to patients, payors and providers around the world.

Not an annual award, The "Chairman's Key Disruptor Award" is only given when deemed deserved by a very worthy individual that has both lead disruptive innovation and translated it into transformational impact for patients, payors and providers. It represents the pinnacle of recognition being implemented at the company as it speeds ahead and aims to bring it's first once or twice yearly diabetes medicine to market. While there are other tiers of performance based recognition and rewards, the "Chairman's Key Disruptor Award" celebrates the cutting edge of innovation and impact necessary to pioneer and shape what best in disease medicines will look like next. As the first award recipient, Tom Alessi succeeded in several very different areas of accomplishment.

"Tom has achieved some of the most amazing accomplishments I've seen in my career, and his leadership and feats of innovation span such diverse functional areas that it blows away the stereotypical executive profile of our highly specialized industry," said Kurt Graves, Chairman, President and CEO of Intarcia. "On the chemistry side of things, Tom led his talented team to the stunning breakthrough that allows us to keep peptides and antibody fragments stable at high body temperatures for multiple years a "holy grail" of peptide chemistry and a feat many outside Intarcia told Tom and his team would never be possible. On the manufacturing side of things, Tom led his team to build a distinctly differentiated and state-of-the-art mini-pump manufacturing facility that produces the once or twice yearly medicine known as ITCA 650 being investigated in phase 3 trials for type 2 diabetes. The site has become a core competitive advantage for us for decades to come. We can make once yearly medicines and combinations for serious diseases that no competitor can hope to duplicate. And perhaps most important is Tom's exemplary character. In the performance of his duties these past 17 years as our Company's second employee in 1997, he has unhesitatingly displayed our core values in action. I hope this award allows Tom to pause long enough to realize what he and his team have achieved, and how deeply we appreciate it. He has served as an inspiration to us to rise above difficult challenges so that we can make a real difference in the lives of patients. Tom's work will have global impact, hopefully touching and transforming millions of patients' lives. For all of this, he certainly deserves our first Chairman's Key Disruptor Award and he sets the right standard for others in Intarcia, and those who wish to join, to follow."

The award itself is a three-dimensional sculpture called "VISIONING" created by artist Kelly Milakus. Kelly, who visited the innovative manufacturing site, explained the piece "is an abstract constructed landscape of the interior and the exterior of our bodies. The color and topography of the organic shapes change with the light, movement, and the texture of the environment. The tiny titanium mini-pumps Tom and his team advanced are placed into the piece and hover over the only color field of orange, representing energy and life enhancing progress. Glowing keys embrace the surface delivering and unlocking the promise of better health and better outcomes for people in need. The Company celebrates Kelly's artwork in its workspaces, and now in its award programs, because it visually represents unleashing talent and unlocking innovations to advance new breakthroughs in medicine and new keys to cures for serious diseases a fundamental principle and set of values that defines Intarcia.

About Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc.Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company developing therapies to enhance treatment outcomes by optimizing and improving the efficacy, eliminating the need for life-long injections, ensuring compliance and persistency over time with up to once-yearly dosing, and by improving the tolerability of drug therapies. Delivering medicines just once or twice yearly virtually ensures patient compliance and persistency, which is very poor in most chronic diseases. Intarcia's drug development expertise and competitive edge are demonstrated by its abilities to stabilize proteins and peptides at above-body temperature and to deliver them in a constant and consistent manner via Intarcia's proprietary technology platforms. Intarcia is conducting a phase 3-stage development program for type 2 diabetes and has additional early development programs ongoing for weight regulation to control obesity. For more information on the Company, please visit www.intarcia.com.

Intarcia and its logo are registered trademarks of Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc.